A Buried Flower
by CondorRadcliff
Summary: Steven and Amethyst are out camping, when they find a mysterious groove in the forest leading to a worrying cave. That cave leads to a worrying chamber, and that chamber leads to a mysterious room occupied by a powerful and unknown enemy. Will Smoky Quartz be enough to save the day? (My 'inspired by' entry for the WA Flower Challenge. Rafflesia/'symbol of death')
1. A Lively Camping Trip

"Okay! I think we're here!" Steven exclaimed, dropping his hiking bag onto the ground. "What do you think?"

Amethyst looked around, amused, pretending to scan an objectively safe clearing for danger. "Eh, looks okay to me." She lowered her own bag to the ground and retracted the whip she'd used as straps. "So? Show me whatcha gottttt."

"Well, Connie suggested it, and she did a lotta research, so that means there should be..." He cupped a hand over his ear. "A river, that way!"

"Uh-huh. What else?" She didn't look in the direction he was pointing. He could hear it, and that was all she needed to know.

"The ground is flat but we're above any flood plains, and it's the rainy season so the risk of fire and snow are low. The weather's supposed to be clear for a few days though, so it's perfect camping conditions."

Steven had done his homework, Amethyst thought. The Pacific Northwest State Forest Park was as good a choice as any for a three-day camping trip. Technically it was a test of his outdoorsmanship and survival skills, and the inherent lack of danger meant there was little for Pearl to fret over. And even if there was, he had been proving himself a lot recently. "Location, location, location," she said, nodding. "What about cooking?"

Steven had begun unpacking his tent. "Well, it looks like there's enough dry wood and twigs around to build a fire, and I have a shovel to dig pits with."

"What if you didn't have a shovel? What if all you had were your bare hands?" She pulled out a clipboard and pen, and pretended to be serious about the testing aspect of the trip. "What would you do then?"

"This!" He stopped preparing his tent and produced his buckler shield, resting it gently on the ground like a wheel. "It's solid enough to dig with, or I could just build a fire in it if I had to."

"Co-_rrect_." She checked a non-existent box with her unopened pen, and then wrote 'INSERT COIN!' approximately where a section for notes would be, all without touching the paper. The whole process was a waste of time, she thought, and Pearl was severely underestimating what a latchkey adolescent was capable of.

"I think I can set up my tent first, because the weather is cooperating and it's - hmm - still early afternoon?" He checked his combination watch/compass for confirmation. "Yup! Two-thirty. Sunset isn't until eighteen-ten, so I have an hour to set up my tent, an hour to dig a fire pit, and an hour to build a fire."

"It is really gonna take that long?"

"Nope!" He unfurled his tent's base layer and began hammering its pegs into the ground with a nearby rock. "Connie said to pad your time a little, in a test. I think we can start eating in... by four?"

"Alriiiiight." She tossed her clipboard and pen against her bag. "Okay, you pass. Congratulations! Test. Over."

"What? Amethyst, you have to take this more seriously."

"Nope." She shrugged and flopped down onto the ground, her eyes closed. "You survived on Mask Island for a week without equipment, fixed the lighthouse _preeeeetty_ much on your own, broke Rose's training drone with _tennis_, and beat that Holo-Pearl without a sword. You don't need more testing."

"But... what are you going to do? If you're not going to proctor?"

"Sleep. Eat. Maybe train a little? Cook. Have musings about the transient permanence of an evergreen forest. Talk to owls. _Explore._ But most importantly! I'm going to enjoy a few days off with my favorite dude, no matter what Pearl says. This test is now a pass-fail, and you pass if you have a good time and make it home safe!"

"Oh." That was somehow exactly what he expected was going to happen. "Well, what do I need to do to fail?"

"Tattle."

"Ah."

Amethyst pushed herself up and looked right at him. "Seriously; my dude. Wink," she said, winking conspiratorially and smiling broadly.

Steven laughed and began trying to loosen up a little.

* * *

It was a little before four o'clock when Steven finished digging the fire and toilet pits. The tent hadn't been difficult at all to set up, so to challenge himself he'd used his shield to dig anyway. Aside from the lack of handles, it turned out to be fairly easy to use as a shovel, so he made a mental note to keep researching other mundane uses for it.

Because it was (supposed to be) a test, he'd decided to do all of the major work himself from the start. It didn't bother him that Amethyst was taking a nap; he just wished he'd brought a spare beach towel or something to pull over her as a blanket.

The work was easy enough, and it gave him time to appreciate the surrounding environment more. Chirping birds, the faint sound of a nearby river that wasn't spelled the way it was pronounced, the smell of cool pine forest air. It was different from the sea breeze and funland cacophony he was used to, in a comfortable and 'on holiday' sort of way. It was all alive and natural, in a way home sometimes was in short bursts.

The clearing was a three-hour hike into the park, itself a two-hour bus ride from the nearest warp pad. (And this was why Amethyst had pushed so hard to chaperone him, he knew - she could shapeshift into a helicopter and get them both out of there in an emergency.) It wasn't the off-season yet, so there were probably other hikers and campers in the area, but they were unlikely to find him until he let the campfire smoke up a beacon.

Technically, it was a Crystal Gem mission. Really though, Amethyst was right: it was a vacation, and he should treat it as such. Marshmallows and beans in a can over a fire, a little ukulele jamming while they cooked, clear star-lit nights and air so fresh you could slap it across the face.

The campsite was about as ready as he could make it.. His equipment was all unpacked and either stashed in the tent or hanging from a nearby branch. All that was left to do, really, was to take advantage of that permit Pearl had arranged for him, and find some wood to start a campfire with.

Then, suddenly, an alarm clock began ringing. For exactly one moment, Steven was confused: where could it be coming from? Then he triangulated the source of the sound, using his mighty Human sense of hearing, working out that it was coming from... Amethyst.

"Ooop." She produced a ringing analog clock from her gem and pressed the silencer. "Nom-nom time? Nom-nom time."

"Almost!" Steven exclaimed, relieved.

"Huh?" Amethyst looked around, seriously this time. "Ohhh, right. Firewood time. Okay! I'm up anyway, so let's do this."

Steven had been expecting to find some nearby logs and twigs on his own, and started to feel like it was cheating to use Amethyst's help. His Shoulder!Pearl and Shoulder!Amethyst had a brief argument over the matter - which brought him to a conclusion. "Yeah! So I was thinking, since it's supposed to be a test, I'd do the collecting and-"

Before he could finish his thought, Amethyst had produced one of her whips and swung the business end gently towards a nearby tree. When it was safely wrapped around its trunk, she smiled and said, "There. Now we won't get lost as long as we stay together. All part of the test - wink."

Soon, under Amethyst's supervision, they were exploring a denser part of the forest not too far from the campsite. It was still fairly light out, so while they were still ostensibly looking for some firewood, it didn't feel like a necessity yet. They were really were just enjoying a gentle romp through the woods, taking their time and making a vacation out of it.

Then, Steven nearly fell.

* * *

"I gotcha! I gotcha!" Amethyst cried out. Her recent training had paid off - before, she would have had to use her whip, but now she could react fast enough to grab his hand directly.

It was a sudden, sheer drop, hidden in the shadows and not marked in any way besides. "aaaaaaaaaa...?" But it was also a fairly short drop, and Steven let go. "I'm okay, I'm okay. See? I can stand up here."

"Here, hang on a sec, I'll get you back up-"

"-No, wait."

"What?"

"This looks artificial?" He pulled a flashlight out and clicked it on. "Yeah... Amethyst, can you come down?"

It was a narrow furrow cut into the ground in a straight line, maybe twenty feet from top to bottom and therefore not a significant hazard by Gem standards. But, being barely wide enough for Steven and Amethyst to stand side by side in and yet long enough in both directions that his flashlight couldn't light the ends, it was extremely out of place.

"Who would make something like this?" Steven asked, shining the light slowly around the furrow.

"Too narrow for a mine opening, and there's no tracks anyway. Could be some old government thing?" They were far down enough that she turned on the light from her gem, to get a better look.

"No, I don't think so. I checked with Ronaldo before we left, and he said there's nothing weird or crazy in the area. I guess if you go south into the next state - Columbia - there's a town with concentrated weirdness-"

"-yeah, but Stanford's got his protege keeping an eye on it-"

"-and there's a logging town fifty miles from here with some kinda history? 'Twin Pines' or something like that."

"But nothing here?" The walls didn't feel like concrete to the touch, even though they looked like it. They felt like under-polished granite.

"Nothing Ronaldo or Connie knew about. What do you think it is?"

"Hmmm..." It definitely hadn't formed naturally, and also wasn't a formation she recognized from hunting down Gem Monsters for centuries. With that said, it appeared to be common granite, the kind that permeated the ground all over the region. Safe enough, she figured. "Do we have time to explore it?"

"Sure, I think." He looked up. The edges weren't so high that they couldn't just jump out if things got weird, and they weren't far from the campsite. They'd even passed some usable-looking wood on the way there. "Pearl might give me extra credit if I write a report on it?"

"Coooool. So here's what I think: it looks like it goes into the mountain that way," she pointed towards the more eastwardly end. "Whatever this groove is, I'm gonna bet it's more interesting where it starts. And hey, if you wanna go back to the campsite, that's fine - but I'm gonna investigate this."

He shook his head. "Nuh-uh. I want that extra credit."

"Then follow me," she said confidently, trying to hide her excitement. It had been a very long time since she'd last taken point on a mission.

* * *

The groove continued eastwardly for another ten minutes' walk, with no change in its size or shape - or grade. As it cut into deeper ground its sides appeared to increase in height, gradually cutting their view of the sky down to a light blue slit. And with each step, it became slightly more necessary to use a flashlight just to move forward.

Now that the walls were thirty feet high, the air was different. It had been possible to smell the forest earlier, and hear the occasional birds or insects; now, the air was quiet and tasted stale, even a little dry.

Then, they reached the end.

"Amethyst, this is kinda creepy," Steven said quietly, staring at the wall in front of them. "Maybe we oughta come back with the others."

"Nah, we can handle it." She _knew_ he was right in a technical sense - there was safety in numbers. But she was still sure it was something they could handle on their own. "If it was dangerous, we wouldn't have let the state make a park here."

"And Garnet would have said something?"

"Exactly." Amethyst replied with deliberate nonchalance for Steven's sake. In truth, the way the walls seemed to have been _molded_ from granite was reason enough to worry. (And the way Garnet's future vision worked, it was possible she didn't say anything because she didn't know about the groove at all.)

She turned around and looked back at the way they came, down the groove that was so long she couldn't see where they'd started from. The Crystal Gems had been surprised before, and the result had been exceptionally rough missions that had taken all three of them working together to just barely survive. Maybe Steven was right, Amethyst thought - it didn't look like there was any harm in waiting to investigate it with the others. "But, y'know, you're right. This wasn't part of the test, and it's not part of a camping trip..." she began.

And then she noticed the look on Steven's face. Not terrified, thankfully, but surprised and a little creeped out. She turned around to see what he'd seen...

The wall wasn't there anymore. It had been a door or gate of some kind and now it was open, with the groove continuing into the mountain.

Into the darkness.

"A-Amethyst?" Steven asked, voice quivering a bit. "It opened. The second you looked away. It just - not like a _door_. It opened."

She took a small breath to steady her nerves, feeling offended that it was having an effect on her. "Welp, guess we're done here. Make a note of where we are, and we'll-"

[WELCOME.]

It wasn't a voice as much as it was a rumble, and at first they both thought it was a natural acoustic phenomenon. It didn't register as language for a few precious moments.

Then, the air began to move.

It was a gentle breeze at first, but before they could react and brace against it, it intensified into a gale - and past that, to where it felt solid, like a tsunami.

The worst part was that it was blowing inwards, into the mountain, inhaling...

_Consuming._

Before they knew what was happening, Steven and Amethyst - both considerably stronger than any mere human - were tumbling deep into the darkness.

They couldn't have seen the door reappear silently behind them.


	2. Entombed In A Prison

"Steven? Steven?!" Amethyst opened her eyes and couldn't tell the difference. She seemed to by physically okay (according to her built-in diagnostic check), so she quickly turned her gemlight on and threw herself upright, intending to find Steven in a hurry. "..._wut_."

It would have to wait. She was in a small, unlit room of some kind - a lab or bunker at a guess. The walls and floor and ceiling of the room were all made of the same material, similar to granite but not. The material wasn't from Homeworld and it wasn't from Earth. If she had to guess, it was almost like some combination of the two, like if one had taken over the other's project.

"Rrrgh!" In a flash, Amethyst's whips cracked against the nearest walls, physically checking for doors or windows.

**WH-WHOOM**, the walls echoed as she beat against them.

"-it's hollow!" She broke into a run and launched a concrete-shattering full-power kick against a wall.

**WH-WHAMM**. The wall echoed again, and definitely sounded empty on the other side, but hadn't broken or even cracked. Instead, it felt thin and unusually durable at the same time, and she thought it flexed a little under her kick.

"BREAK-BREAK-BREAK-BREAK-BREAK-BREAK!" she chanted as she threw blow after deceptively heavy blow at the wall: **WH-WH-WH-WH-WH-WH-WHokk-**

Suddenly that section the wall gave way, shattering apart like tempered glass into the space behind it. "It worked!" Amethyst jumped through the hole, whips in both hands, gemlight shining at its widest. "Steven! Steven, where are you?!"

* * *

No reply.

Steven pounded again at the wall. "Hey! Anyone! Is anyone there?!"

No reply.

He stopped pounding and took a step away from the wall. "It... might be someone's home or an important building of some kind. But they trapped me here, and I'm allowed to register a complaint!"

First he tried his buckler shield, whacking it against the wall. **TWONG-TWONG-TWONG**.

Then he tried his bubble shield, expanding it silently against the floor and ceiling and walls. "Hrrrrr!" Even filling the room wasn't enough pressure. "Well, that's not working."

He dissipated his bubble and tried to think. "Oh! What about...?"

Peridot had suggested a Thing once, based on something she'd seen a 'green' character in an '80s show do. He'd tried it a couple of times, mostly to humor her. "But I guess it's worth a shot," he said, concentrating. The shape and quantity were the hardest parts. Actually producing them was easy enough - he needed more practice to get them to work how he wanted them to.

Soon, he was ready. "PINK KAISER!" (Shouting out the attack name wasn't actually necessary, but it felt appropriate.)

A flock of little pink bubbles swarmed out from his gem. Some attached themselves to his arms, solidifying over them into a pair of elbow-length gauntlets, while the rest formed two more pairs in midair. Getting them where he wanted felt similar in sensation to balancing on one tiptoe - and was just as difficult. "Okay, okay, and then - ROSEY PISTON!"

With a straight blast technique Ruby had taught him that time in the empty pool, he threw punch after punch at a single point on the wall - with the hovering Pink Kaiser gauntlets joining in.

**WH-WH-WH-WH-WH-WH-WHOMMM**...

After a few dozen rounds, mental and physical exhaustion kicked in. He 'let go', and the gauntlets began dissipating as he kneeled to rest. "They're too much to maintain at once. Sorry, Peridot. _Whoo_ \- recovery's too long for this move."

"Calm down; calm down, Steven." He dropped onto the floor and sat, arms crossed, and tried a breathing exercise. "So, I'm trapped in a room. All six sides are made of the same material. No doors, and also no joins. The Gems wouldn't waste our time on a test like this, so I have to assume it's a hostile external entity. My powers and physical strength aren't enough to break out with. The Rosey Piston might work with more practice, because I felt the wall give a little. Amethyst would have told me if Homeworld was involved, and Ronaldo would have wanted to tag along if it was a government thing and he knew about it - so I guess those are out?"

He took a deep breath. "The air's stale. I have plenty of it, but it's not coming from anywhere. And I'm uninjured, so... I'm a prisoner? Or a test subject? No food or water, so it's a short-term thing." Steven laughed and stood up again.

"Really short-term!" He jumped at the wall and kicked it.

**WH-mmm**

* * *

"What the..."

Rescuing Steven was still her top priority, but now Amethyst was forced to take stock of her surroundings. Not because they were especially interesting, but because of how bizarre their situation was.

Upon violently exiting her room, she'd discovered that she was in a much larger room - a chamber - with several other boxes like hers laid out in a regular grid. It was impossible to tell if there was anyone in them, because just like hers, none of them had doors or windows. But if she'd ended up in one, it seemed pretty likely that Steven had too.

"Steven, where are you?" she said to herself.

Just then, faintly, she heard a familiar sound:

**wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-whommm**...

"Steven?" It was coming from a box kitty-corner to her own, but then stopped as she got closer. She pressed her head up against the box wall, trying to hear inside - but heard nothing.

As she raised prepared to break in, a thought occurred to her and she looked back at the debris her own breakout had created. Not only had it all shattered out really violently, some of the fragments flew into the box next-door hard enough to leave marks. "Ahh. Nope, not a good idea."

Brute strength worked, clearly, but might cause injury. "C'mon, Amethyst. Think. _Think!_ How do I break Steven out without hurting him?! I got punches and kicks and whips, and punches and kicks are out, so that leaves..." She looked down at the whips in her hands. They hadn't worked earlier - but they were all she had.

They were an unusual weapon for a Gem built for physical strength - she'd known this since she started going on missions with Rose Quartz. Instead of building on her personal strengths they seemed to cover for her shortcomings, giving her a long, wide reach, but not allowing her to focus on single targets as easily as Garnet and Pearl's weapons did.

In hindsight, she'd stepped to _Jasper_ with a highly unorthodox fighting style. She'd trained for _that _fight, and since then she'd wondered if maybe it hadn't worked out because it was just that much of a mismatch. These boxes weren't Jasper; she had the strength to break them just fine. The challenge now was not to _break _them, but to rescue Steven.

She needed _focus _now, not strength. No - she needed to focus her strength. "...what am I capable of?" she asked herself slowly. "What are these-"

She stopped. "What _are_ these?" They had a strange design, for whips. Humans used whips too, and they were only superficially alike. Hers were more like vines with crystals embedded in them, and flexible to her will just short of actually being prehensile.

With a thought, she shortened one to about sword length, and then extended it out again. The material didn't stretch; it just retracted into the handle and extended out again.

So, she concentrated on actually _shrinking it_.

To her surprise, the vine material compressed and pulled the crystals close together, stiffening until it was as solid as a club or baton. "Wait, what?!" she exclaimed, shaking it around. "Okay, okay. What happens if I do this...?"

She sent a spark of energy into the baton, expecting it to travel up along its length like it did when it was a whip. Instead, the spark burst from crystal to crystal, jumping so quickly that at first she thought the baton was engulfed by it. "Can I use this?" she whispered.

Playing that hunch, she pumped more and more energy into it, until the whole baton hummed with energy and looked like a saber made of light. "Did- did I just make a Laser Blade?" She swung it around a couple of times with deliberate care, feeling the weight and balance of it. "Um, okay, but what can I do with it?"

**wh-mmm**

The center of the wall in front of her reverberated from someone attacking it. "Steven?"

There wasn't time to mess around. A dynamic piano-and-violin theme played in her mind, quickly joined by some brass "C'mon, more power, more power, more power..." she chanted to herself, forcing as much energy as she could into the baton. Focusing it.

"_JooooHHHH_-" she exclaimed as she jumped up, and then she brought the blade of energy down on the corner of the box. "-_TAAAAAAaaaahh!_"

Nothing happened.

Them there was a **POPP**, and the corner slid down to the floor along a cut as clean as a sheet of paper.

* * *

"Amethyst, that's amazing!" Steven exclaimed in a starry-eyed voice, as he examined the evolution of her weapon. Breaking him out had of course been very impressive, but to him it was secondary to the fact that she could do samurai-style one-stroke delayed cleaves now. "Can you show me? Later, I mean."

"Yeah? I think I can do it again. Just, don't be surprised if it was a heat-of-the-moment thing. The charge time and energy drain are too much." She shrugged away the doubt. "Oh! I'm gonna call it the 'Amethyst Dyn-' - no, no, too obvious. The 'Purple Flash'? _Yeeeeeeeeahhh_. AMETHYST! PURPLE FLASH!" To Steven's delight and her own amusement, she followed this with a theatrical slashing movement.

They had a good laugh, in reaction to the tension of their imprisonment.

"...we're still stuck in this place," Steven said, half to himself but smiling nonetheless.

"Aaaawwww, this is nothin'. I've been in worse," Amethyst said with a grin. "We'll get out okay. And then we'll roast weenies on a campfire!"

"Yaaaaaaaaay!"

"So yeah, just follow me out of… whatever this place is." In all that excitement, she hadn't taken a proper look around the chamber they were in.

As a Human _or_ Gem building, it didn't make a whole lot of sense. It was a big, perfectly square room, small enough that they could tell there were walls and ceilings but far too big to actually shine their flash/gemlights on them. It lacked any kind of functional internal structures - cranes, booths, catwalks, etc. - and, except for the little room-sized boxes they'd been sealed into, appeared to be empty.

The air was oddly dry and dusty, more so than the groove had been, with no indication that anything living had been there in a while. And then there was the cold. Not so cold that someone couldn't live there; just cold enough that no one would _want_ to. Like a desert after sunset.

The only material they could see was that same granite-like concrete from before. "...gemcrete," Steven said quietly. "I'm going to call it that from now on. And we should probably take a sample with us." He pocketed a small piece left over from Amethyst's breakout.

She hadn't noticed before, but his words were quickly eaten up by silence. There was no background noise to wipe it out, whereas even abandoned Gem facilities had _some _kind of natural sound. There wasn't even an echo - which would have been unsurprising, given the immense size of the chamber, except that they couldn't hear any from the walls of the rooms they passed.

As confident a face as Amethyst was putting on, she knew they were in for a rough time. The gemcrete was tough, appeared to absorb sound, and seemed to have low reflectivity as well. Taken together, this meant that outside discovery was unlikely from the Crystal Gems, let alone Human organizations.

The worst part was that it seemed like they were underground. Even if they simply punched their way out of the chamber, they would then have to deal with easily-collapsing dirt and rock and earth. It was a problem for a skilled geologist/materials engineer, not a fighter/lover multi-class like Amethyst. As loathe as she was to admit it, their best course of action was to somehow alert Pearl and Garnet, and have them drill down an escape tunnel as Sardonyx.

Amethyst sighed, and produced her phone. "Aaaaand no signal. No surprise there."

"Yeah, I tried that too. No luck," Steven said.

"Steven, it's worse than that. _Pearl_ made my phone. I should be able to call a telegraph machine from a submarine." She put it back into her gem.

"Well, what does that mean?"

To keep her stomach from sinking any further, she pulled a whip out. "It means we might have to fight our way out-"

[THAT WON'T BE NECESSARY.]

The rumbling of the air was at first not speech, until their minds reassembled it as such. "Who's there? Who are you?" Steven asked, casting his flashlight around.

[WELCOME, GUESTS.]

Amethyst gently put a hand on his shoulder and pointed. He stopped swinging around and saw she was pointing at light in the distance that hadn't been there earlier. "Guests?" he asked.

She nodded. "Let's go meet our host."

The expression on her face wasn't one of anger or happiness. Steven had seen it before, and been on the receiving end of it too - it was how she looked immediately before tying her hair up. She walked ahead of him towards the light, striding; he felt a contact high welling up inside himself, of determination, as he followed.

Truth be told, she'd remembered what that groove reminded her of. The shape didn't make any sense, but it was like the hole a Gem made when she first broke through the ground.


	3. A Wan, Caliginous Divinity

The light had turned out to be a tunnel leading out of the pointlessly large gemcrete chamber. It was longer than the groove, it seemed, and made of gemcrete - but glowed white, somehow providing its own light without needing separate fixtures to cast it.

"Do you know what to expect?" Steven asked. They had only been walking for a few minutes and already he couldn't see the chamber behind them. As ghostly as the lighting was making things, he knew it was still back there; the tunnel's lighting was just making it impossible to see into the darkness beyond, in either direction.

Amethyst shook her head. "No idea. Stay close and..." She looked back at him with a friendly smirk. "Be ready to throw down the Smoke Bomb."

"Mm!" Steven nodded. He balled his fists and took in a deep breath to gird himself.

Then the lighting faded away, as though someone had slowly activated a dimmer switch. Amethyst turned up her gemlight in response - reacting so quickly that at first Steven thought the color had just changed. "Guess we're close," she said. "Look."

A pinpoint of white light in the distance contrasted against the relative darkness of the tunnel. It was the same unnatural white light, and as they got closer it became clear that it was from the same source.

The tunnel ended, and they found themselves in a round chamber. It was smaller than the square chamber in all directions, maybe a third as wide with a height of about three stories. The perfect roundness of the gray gemcrete walls was again without seams, except for edges where it joined the floor and ceiling.

The only difference now was the air. "Do you smell that?" Steven asked.

Amethyst took a quiet sniff. "Yeah. Weird. Smells like gar... bage?" Her brow jumped up in recognition. "It smells like a Rafflesia. I can take it, but it might make _you_ hurl like a can of whipped cream." She snapped her fingers and a purple clothespin appeared on her nose, pinching it, then produced a wooden one for Steven.

He shook his head, refusing the clothespin. "Rafflesia? The flower?" He remembered the name - and not much else - from that time he'd helped Ronaldo study flowers to impress his girlfriend. "Why would one be here?"

"Good question." Suddenly, Amethyst began shouting. "Hey! We're here now! How 'bout you entertain us, like a _good_ host!"

The room was quiet again for a moment, as they looked around for someone or something to show themselves. Then, as before, the air itself boomed.

[STEP BACK TO THE EDGE.]

They hadn't really gone into the room at all, and only had to take a couple of steps backwards to touch the wall. It was something they would have done anyway, since the floor began to silently open up from the center.

The gemcrete had displayed some unusual properties earlier, but now it was dilating away from the hole in an organic movement far more like an eye than a camera lens. At no point did any part of it stop glowing, nor did the luminosity of the room as a whole change; the hole in the center simply appeared to be a two-dimensional space of nothingness.

Then, just as suddenly as it had started, the hole stopped growing, leaving a ten foot wide rim next to the wall.

"Well? We're still waiting!" Amethyst said.

This time, the reply came not as booming air but as a voice - a clear, monotone tenor - that was almost certainly female, yet seemed to lack vitality. "MY GREATEST APOLOGIES, CRYSTAL GEMS. YOUR ARRIVAL WAS A SURPRISE, LEAVING ME UNPREPARED TO MEET YOU AT FIRST. BUT NOW I AM READY."

From the darkness arose a large array of five pale-red 'petals' ringing a circle of darkness, identifiable after a moment as a Rafflesia - or an approximation of one, as it was neither organic nor accurate. It was being lifted upwards on a gemcrete platform the same size as the hole in the floor, though it was unclear if that was the original floor reformed at a lower level or an altogether different one taking its place.

Underneath the petals was a thick light-brown stem that, once the platform had seamlessly fixed itself to the floor, was clearly growing up from the gemcrete.

No, it itself was gemcrete.

The flower, its petals and maybe even the dark hole within, was gemcrete.

The same material that Steven and Amethyst had been surrounded by since they'd first left the groove.

The walls seemed to be grinning now, with mouths they didn't have. Faceless mouths formed on the stem - hundreds of them - and began speaking in a cacophonous union: "WELCOME, CRYSTAL GEMS. I WAS ONCE MANY, AND NOW I AM AMMOLITE."

The round chamber began to shake, and with it they felt a rising sensation.

* * *

"COME, CRYSTAL GEMS. ASCEND WITH ME TO THE HEAVENS."

"We don't want to!" Amethyst turned her position ever so slightly, finding a better stance to fight from. "And if you try to make us-!"

"YOU RESIST, WARRIOR?" The gemcrete walls grew sharp, spear-like points, that then bent themselves towards their position. "YOU ARE BUT ONE, AGAINST MY MANY!"

"Waitwaitwait!" Steven stepped in front of Amethyst, deliberately bare-handed. To his relief, the spears stayed still; he smiled nervously, trying to show diplomatic calm. "We don't know who you are, or what's going on. What are you trying to do, Ammolite?"

To their discomfort, Ammolite began to laugh. It was a chuckle, really - not inherently disturbing - but by being repeated and amplified through hundreds of mouths it became a mocking cacophony. And as sudden as a rain, it ceased. "I WISH TO RULE, ENVOY."

"Rule?! Over what!" Amethyst stepped to Steven's side.

"EARTH! THE STARS! HOMEWORLD! ALL OF SPACE AND TIME!" She paused, and just as it seemed like she would start laughing again, she continued. "CAN YOU NOT SEE IT? I SEE THE END OF A UNIVERSE, THE DEATH OF A CENTURY. AFTER WAR COMES NOT PEACE, BUT ME! THE NEW AND THE OLD, THE UNENDING CYCLE - THE COMING OF AMMOLITE IS THE ONLY EVENTUALITY."

"What the..." Steven whispered to himself.

"THE ONLY TRUE BEAUTY IS THE STILLNESS OF LIFE, CRYSTAL GEMS. AND WITH MY ARRIVAL, STILL AND SILENT WILL BE THE LAW! ALL LIFE! ALL MATTER! ALL WILL BOW TO MY WILL, AND REMAIN UNTO ETERNITY! AND YOU, MY GUESTS, WILL WITNESS FIRSTHAND THIS BEAUTY-"

"We're _not_ getting lectured about beauty by a _corpse flower_!" Amethyst dropped her whips and assumed a pose. "Steven!"

"Right!" He assumed his own pose. And in a quick movement, they bumped their fists together and disappeared together into a single flash of light.

"..._Smokyyyyyyy Quartz!_" they announced. "Whoo, _that's_ a smell!"

"FUSION?! YOU CHOOSE TO DEFY ME?"

"Duuhh!" Smoky Quartz produced their yo-yos and hunched a little into a fighting stance. "That's not beauty yer talkin' about - that's decay. Who'd want that?"

"ALL MUST! ALL WILL! ...SPEARS!"

In the blink of an eye the gray gemcrete spears thrust forward, turning and extending towards Smoky Quartz in two-dimensional angles. They ran into the spinning yo-yos from all angles, chopped apart as though grass to a mower, succeeding only at forcing a stalemate situation. "Like kale in a blender, Ammolite! I need a couple'a bananas, 'cause I'm having my green smoothie _early_ today!"

"INSOLENT! IMMATURE-!"

"-Indomitable! Inimitable!"

More spears appeared and thrust towards Smoky Quartz. "I AM IMMUTABLE!"

"And I'm inconsistent!" While continuing to tear apart the spears with the yo-yos in their hands, they created and launched a single yo-yo from their belly gem. It spun forward, stopping and changing direction every so often, until it smashed into Ammolite's stalk and stuck there like a throwing axe. "See? Like that! Now _BOOOM!_"

A spark appeared from their belly gem and burned through the extended string, until it reached the yo-yo - which exploded on the stalk.

**BOOOMMM**

The dust cleared quickly from the breeze their spinning yo-yos were making - and for a moment, the attack appeared to have worked. The spears stopped in mid air and hung there for a few seconds, then retracted back into the walls. The large gash that one yo-yo left formed itself into a pair of lips, and then a new, smiling mouth full of teeth.

"YOU ARE POWERLESS TO STOP ME, CRYSTAL GEM. IN YOUR HELPLESSNESS, WITNESS NOT MY BEAUTY, BUT MY TRIUMPH! BEAR WITNESS TO MY CORONATION UNDER GOLDEN RAYS!"

* * *

The light in the ceiling began flowing away from the center, followed by the gemcrete melting back into the walls. White light gave way to gray gemcrete which gave way to a hole - black at first, then blue, as the mid-afternoon sky intruded into Ammolite's world.

"The sky? We're outside?" Smoky Quartz said. "Did- did you lift us up through a _mountain?_"

"I CAN DO WHAT YOU CANNOT. I GO WHERE YOU CANNOT. BY MY OWN WILL, I AM UNBOUND BY NATURAL LAW! NOW WATCH, CRYSTAL GEM, AS I EVOLVE!"

The floor shook again as the walls too melted away, rendering it a disc rotating freely around an enormous flower stalk. It was clear now that they were outside, floating several thousand feet above the evergreens and mountains of the Pacific Northwest State Forest Park.

In spite of it all, it was a nice view. "Huh. Guess that solves one problem?" Smoky Quartz said to themselves, while dissipating their yo-yos.

Ammolite wasn't done, however. Two gray gemcrete arms grew from the brown stalk, while a face formed around that large mouth Smoky Quartz had accidentally helped make. "GAZE UPON MY FORM, CRYSTAL GEM. WITNESS THE SHAPE I TAKE TO BEQUEATH TRUE LIBERTY, TRUE JUSTICE, TRUE DESTINY!"

"Give me a _break_!" Smoky Quartz shot back. "None of those things mean anything without a life to live!"

"I WILL MEND SUCH UNBREAKABLE LAWS WHEN IT PLEASES ME." She spread her arms out, as though preparing to embrace the sun and the sky around it. "I WILL CONSUME WHAT BEGINS THE CYCLE ON THIS PLANET, AND WITH MY DARKNESS RIGHTFULLY TAKE ITS PLACE AS THE GOAL FOR EXISTENCE!"

"You're as nutty as a hazelnut sandwich, Ammolite." The words were barely out of their mouth when they jumped up from the disc. In the blink of an eye they created a house-sized rose-brown floating bubble-shield, and harnessed themselves to its underside with purplish-brown ropes. "Smoky Quartz, Flying Forrrrrrrmation!" they announced, looking very much like a hot air balloon and basket.

Ammolite's arm appeared to move slowly through the sky, whipping against air resistance as she tried to swat the fusion down. "HOW DARE YOU CHEAT ME OF A CLEAN HIT!" she roared, missing again and again.

"Dude: _git gud_. That's all I can tell you now."

"I AM THE END OF ALL THINGS! I AM THE END OF YOU!" One of her arms became thinner, until it looked uncomfortable like a blade the length of a mountain. "I REJECT YOUR EXISTENCE!" she said, bringing that blade down onto Smoky Quartz with greater velocity than before.

They couldn't move out of the way in time, and so took a direct hit to the 'balloon' from above. They had time to gasp, and then...

The blade shattered against the 'balloon'.

"WHAT?!"

"-the _heck?_"

The smaller shards simply evaporated into ash and dust, while the larger ones cracked and broke apart first. Ammolite's blade-arm looked less impressive now, though what was still directly connected to her showed no sign of decay. She was suddenly distracted with a self-inspection, something Smoky Quartz didn't miss.

"Hey, Amethyst - _what gives?_" Smoky Quartz said to themselves. "...wait, really? Even though we're literally beings of light- well, sure, okay, there _is _that. So, uh, should I rub it in?"

"THIS CANNOT BE! THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE!"

"Really goin' for the cliche, huh? Alright, let's end this." They took a breath. "Hey Ammolite! Wanna know a fun word? '_Photodegradation_'!"

"...WHAT?" For the first time, Ammolite sounded worried.

"You shoulda stayed a creepy shut-in!" They began gaining altitude, quickly getting above Ammolite. Above her petals, and the dark hole they surrounded. "Now you're right where I want you!"

"_CRYSTAL GEEEEEEEEEMMMMMMMMM!_" Ammolite swung her other hand up, open and intending to crush Smoky Quartz.

"And you're not so scary when I can see you coming!" Their gems sparkled, as they grasped three yo-yos and spun them out to follow two others. The five yo-yos each hit the base of a different petal, embedding themselves just outside of the hole. "Now let's see whatcha hidin' inside! _BOOOM!_"

Five sparks raced down five strings and, when they terminated in the yo-yos, exploded.

**B-B-B-B-BOOOMMM**

Amethyst had guessed correctly. No matter how much Ammolite herself was unaffected by exposure to the sun, she hadn't properly prepared her gemcrete for the possibility of photodegradation. She'd been underground for too long, and had forgotten the cardinal, unspoken rule of living on the surface - one that Amethyst knew all too well.

The petals, now unexpectedly brittle, split apart one by one from the stem. In the sun and wind, against the green of the forest, they broke apart into smaller and smaller pieces as they fell, losing their red color to the gray of ash, until there was nothing left to hit the ground.

They left behind a crumbling gemcrete cylinder, formerly so shaded by them that it seemed to _eat_ light, but was now completely exposed. And in the center, there was a pedestal of sorts, atop of which was a small, shimmering fragment of hypocrisy.

"There! That's Ammolite's gem! Let's end this..." Smoky Quartz yanked their 'balloon' towards themselves and kicked off of it right as they dissipated the harness. They flew down towards the gem and, with Ammolite screaming indiscriminately, kicked through the pedestal...

...and the stalk.

The screaming ended suddenly, as her physical form became a mere mineral formation the moment it lost the force animating it.

Smoky Quartz didn't look back. Not as they approached the ground, and not as they landed, with Ammolite's gem in hand. They didn't have to - they could hear that unearthly pillar of gemcrete collapsing and disappearing into dust behind them.

They stood up from the slight hunched stoop they'd taken as they landed. "...aww _dangit!_ I forgot to call out the attack name. So embarrassing. 'Least it smells better now," they said, as their form reverted to light, and then two forms.

* * *

"So, what was all that?" Steven asked, as he looked at the shell-like gem in his hand. The ash had all disappeared into the wind, and when they'd gone back to check on the groove it now ended in a small, natural cave.

"A Gem Monster. Musta gone crazy by herself - so crazy she regained her mind. Pro'lly needed someone to _see_ her, and that's why she waited..." Amethyst started to think about how she'd met the other Crystal Gems - then cut it short by focusing on her growling stomach. "...Anyway!"

"Y-yeah?" He sent the bubbled gem home.

"We just cheated death. Howsabout we let the others know you passed your test, and celebrate with a weenie roast?" She smiled as though nothing unusual had happened.

Steven began laughing. Nothing unusual _had _happened. With his life, a quiet weekend camping trip _survival test_ was the most unusual thing he was going to get to do all month. And now he had time to enjoy the rest of his test.

Later that evening, they ate a small feast of campfire food in Ammolite's honor over a ukulele jam and watched the stars shimmer.


End file.
